His mother stepped homeward over the plough-ridges with stern unyielding steps, as if they were her enemies slain in battle.
Just as she reached her own yard her husband drove in on a rattling farm cart.

She beckoned to him, and he pulled the horse up short.
"I've told him he needn't come home to dinner," she said, standing close to the wheel.
Caleb looked down at her with a scared expression.

"Well, I s'pose you know what's best, Deborah," he said.
"If he can't do what's right he's got to suffer for it," returned Deborah.
She went into the house, and Caleb drove clanking into the barn.
Before dinner the old man stole off across lots, keeping well out of sight of the kitchen windows lest his wife should see him, and pleaded with Barnabas, but all in vain.

The young man was more outspoken with his father, but he was just as firm.
"Your mother's terrible set about it, Barney.

You'd better go over to Charlotte's and make up." "I can't; it's all over," Barney said, in reply; and Caleb at length plodded soberly and clumsily home.
After dinner he went out behind the barn, and Rebecca, going to feed the hens, found him sitting under the wild-cherry tree, fairly sobbing in his old red handkerchief.
She went near him, and stood looking at him with restrained sympathy.
"Don't feel bad, father," she said, finally.